The defendants in the case of the attempted murder of Simonyan agreed to commit a crime for $50,000

Members of the National Socialism/White Power terrorist group banned in Russia agreed to commit the murder of Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of RT and the Rossiya Segodnya media group, for $50,000. This was announced on October 20 by the official representative of the Investigative Committee of Russia, Svetlana Petrenko.

"Balashov, along with another member of the cell, Egor Savelyev, agreed to commit the murder of Simonyan on the order of unidentified persons. The accomplices gathered information about her schedule and travel routes," Petrenko is quoted as saying on the UK Telegram channel.

The investigation into 12 members of the group has been completed. They are charged with forming a terrorist organization, inciting hatred, robberies and preparing murder. According to the investigation, after receiving firearms from the customers, the attackers planned to proceed with the crime.

On October 11, it was reported that some of the defendants in the case of preparing the assassination attempt on Simonyan partially admitted their guilt of hooliganism.

Prior to that, on August 31, 2024, it became known that investigators had opened a new criminal case as part of the investigation into the preparation of attempts on Simonyan and TV presenter Ksenia Sobchak. In particular, three defendants were charged with crimes under Part 2 of Article 205.5 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation ("Participation in the activities of an organization that is recognized as terrorist in accordance with the legislation of the Russian Federation").

On August 27, it was reported that three defendants in the case of the attempted murder of journalists partially admitted guilt. It was clarified that the five arrested were charged with hooliganism.

In July 2023, the FSB announced the detention of members of the neo-Nazi group Paragraph 88, accomplices of the Security Service of Ukraine, who were preparing attempts on Simonyan and Sobchak. The defendants were placed under arrest by court order. The service stressed that a reward of 1.5 million rubles was expected for the murder of one journalist on assignment.

One of those who prepared the crime, Mikhail Balashov, confessed that he was carrying out a task for the Ukrainian special services. The young man, born in 2005, explained that he had organized the neo-Nazi group Paragraph 88 and had attracted minors to participate in it.

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